"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is a poem by which of the following?

"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is a five-line poem by Randall Jarrell published in 1945. The poem is about the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II American bomber aircraft.

Jarrell, who served in the Army Air Forces, provided the following explanatory note:

A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17, B-24, B-25, B-32 and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the fetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965) was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress"— a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate of the United States.

Among other honors, Jarrell was awarded a "Guggenheim Fellowship" for the years 1947–48; and the "National Book Award for Poetry", in 1961.